


we are ghosts amongst the hills

by Lost Soul Here (naterkins)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Future Character Death, Future Fic, Gen, Off-screen Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naterkins/pseuds/Lost%20Soul%20Here
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara has never been afraid of dying, but in her nightmares, she is always alone and alive with the dead. Implied pairings. Future fic, slightly AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are ghosts amongst the hills

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** Major character death (if the archive warning and tags weren't enough for you).

_The moon holds the light_  
 _And the moon's this spinning globe  
Shedding light upon the road  
The bird won't fly  
And a bird without its wings is a low and tragic thing_

—

Katara can count the times she has worn robes like these on both hands. First for her father, who passes away when he sees the peace his children helped create. Then for Iroh, who goes peacefully in his sleep, above his beloved teashop in Ba Sing Se. Gran Gran goes next, breathing her last in the frigid air of the North Pole, ending where she began.

—

It isn’t until much later that Sokka leaves them, caught in the crossfire of the rising gang wars in the shining streets of Republic City. His children are still young, and Suki does the best she can, what with two boys and another child— _a girl_ , Katara had promised—on the way. But everyone still feels a little light leave the world.

—

Suki is a warrior until the end, part of Fire Lord Zuko’s security detail on the thirty-fifth anniversary celebration of the founding of Republic City. She leaps in front the assassin’s poisoned dart before anyone even sees it coming. Katara does what she can, but it isn’t long before all she can do is watch the blood fall from Suki’s lips and blend with her Kyoshi Warrior face paint. (Katara thinks it is only fitting that Suki and Sokka reunite the same way they had met: powdered white face, painted red lips, warrior’s wolf tail, and trusty boomerang.)

—

Aang’s death hits her like a new moon, leaving her gasping for breath and trying to right herself. He is so much younger than she expected he would be in the end, nearly seventy years old, compared to Kyoshi’s two centuries, and Roku only died because Fire Lord Sozin left him in a sea of poisonous gases. Her hands shake when she throws his ashes in the wind, and several granules of ash smudge along the sleeves of her funeral robes.

—

She lives in relative peace for another decade—they find the Avatar only a few years after Aang died, and it takes everything Katara has not to resent this young girl for being brash where Aang was peaceful, loud where Aang was calm—and her children have moved on. Pema gives birth to her and Tenzin’s first child, a tiny dark-haired girl they name Jinora, before Toph dies in the most anti-climactic way imaginable for the world’s most powerful earthbender and the inventor of metalbending: in her sleep. It is Lin who finds her the next morning, carrying in a tray with a pot of tea (the tea set was a congratulatory gift from Iroh for the opening of the Bei Fong Metalbending Academy). The delicate porcelain shatters when it hits ground, and Lin can feel the earthen clay scatter across the room, but she cannot feel her mother’s steady heartbeat vibrating through the ground and into her fingertips.

  
(This is the only time Lin regrets leaving Tenzin to be with Pema with uncharacteristically quiet acquiescence, because Tenzin would have known exactly what to do with her and her mother, cold and quiet for the first time Lin can remember, because Tenzin would have held her as she sobbed and tried to pick up the pieces of the ruined tea set, because Tenzin would have _understood_ without even knowing how it felt.)  
  
Katara cannot be a pallbearer—her bones have become brittle and she is more worn than ever, and she cannot help but think that Toph would have scoffed and bent the coffin into the ground herself—but she stands as close to the grave as possible when it is filled, allowing herself to be covered in dirt, just for Toph.  
  
(She folds her robes, filth and all, selfishly praying to the spirits that she would not need it before he does.)

—

Twelve years later, her robes are somehow clean when she finds it lying across the bed’s crimson sheets in her room in the Fire Nation. The white silk has been opened and added to at the waist and shoulders to make way for her withering posture, and the sleeves are worn thin at the elbows, but she can still trace her wrinkled fingers over the embroidered golden fire lilies. _Only the best for you, for this_ , Zuko had whispered so long ago when she was barely seventeen and her father had just left her and Sokka for good.

  
She smiles a sad, old, wistful smile that she had seen on her Gran Gran’s face but never understood until now.  
  
It isn’t until she hears Zuko and Mai’s daughter Kai, who has been Fire Lord for nearly twenty years, sobbing loudly in her office that she realizes _this is it_. No more arguments with Sokka or gossiping with Suki or scheming with Toph or receiving handmade flower necklaces from Aang or sparring with Zuko.  
  
She is alone now.  
  
Zuko’s cremation is the most magnificent ceremony she has ever witnessed, including her own wedding to the Avatar himself. Katara would not have believed that the celebration of the former Fire Lord’s life was grander than his _own_ wedding ceremony had she not been standing as a guest of honor on the raised dais with the current Fire Lord, her husband Zhen, the Crown Princess Aiko, and the Crown Prince, General Iroh.  
  
Her blue eyes, still clearer than the arctic seas, brush past the sea of Fire Nation citizens and Fire Sages in white, resting on the bundle of red silk lying on the raised golden palanquin.  
  
“Zuko,” one of the more ancient Fire Sages begins, but Katara does not look at him. “Fire Lord to our nation for twenty-five years. Together, you and Avatar Aang, now passed, ended the Hundred Years’ War, restored balance to our world, and built Republic City. You were father of Kai, husband of Mai, now passed. Grandfather of Aiko and Iroh. We lay you to rest.” Two sages bend scorching white tongues of fire at the funeral pyre.  
  
Katara does not move, and the flames consuming the body of her last best friend gleam like stars in her eyes.

—

She is not dressed in white when they return her to the sea two years later. Her children have dressed her in the darkest of blues and the purest white furs. Her hair is done in elaborate ceremonial braids and fastened with beads made of whalebone ivory, and the necklace Aang carved for her is still around her neck, beneath the furs. But none of it matters, as she is wrapped in layers of sealskin secured with twine.

  
(Her eyes had been fading for weeks, they say, before she closed them for the last time.)  
  
Kya wears the necklace that once belonged to her namesake. (She tried to refuse the necklace, but Katara insisted, knowing the coldness seeping into her bones was not a sign of the upcoming winter.) For once Bumi is the quietest, and Tenzin does not need to soothe his children’s chattering.  
  
Korra offers to help bend Katara’s casket into the sea, but Kya, always her mother’s daughter, refuses. Mako can do nothing but watch and grip Korra’s gloved hand in his own, and Bolin’s arms are wrapped tightly around Jinora, her shoulders heaving with sobs and her tears freezing along her cheeks. Ikki anxiously adjusts the hat on Meelo’s bald head; Rohan is only nine but he understands that his Gran Gran is gone for good, although he does not understand how or why.  
  
Everyone is silent, and the only sounds are those of the icebergs clinking against one another.  
  
Katara slips into the sea almost soundlessly, and a delicate cage freezes around the bundle carrying her body.

—

_We are ghosts  
We are ghosts amongst these hills  
From the trees of velvet green  
To the ground beneat our feet  
We are ghosts_  

James Vincent McMorrow – **Ghosts**

 

**Author's Note:**

> To help you as the reader (and myself as the writer who likes to keep track of everything ever, even if it’s not necessary), I created a timeline centered around Katara in the story: Katara is 17 when Hakoda dies, around 25 when Iroh dies, and about 28 when Gran Gran dies. She is 32 when Sokka dies and around 50 when Suki dies. She is 68 when Aang dies and 78 when Toph died. She is 90 when Zuko dies and 92 when she herself dies. Zuko’s daughter is 25 when Zuko retires, at age 50, and she becomes Fire Lord. (If you are a more spatial person like I am, [I also made a visual timeline](http://i.imgur.com/eMjlF.png), which is what I used as reference for the ages in this story.)
> 
> As for the names of Zuko’s daughter, her husband, and her children, I chose from traditional Japanese names. I know a lot of the Internet has decided that Zuko’s daughter’s name is Honora, but I honestly do not think he would name his daughter something like that, even though he’s all about honor. I really like the name Kai, which is a name for boys and girls, and if I made an OC in the Avatar!verse, I would name her Kai (and she would be a firebender, of course). Aiko is based off a common Japanese name, and the suffix _-ko_ means “young girl.” And we all know who Iroh is. c:


End file.
